Yeah, that. Sure.<\/p>\n
But Kevin Underhill’s Lowering the Bar blog offers another one. And unlike the Texas judge — why does everything rotten seem to come from Texas? and right, I’ve asked that question before<\/a> — this one is fall-on-the-floor funny. (Although given the Texas decision, maybe don’t fall on the floor and create a pre-existing condition. So sit upright. And laugh, laugh, laugh.)<\/p>\n When most of us last saw Len Kachinsky, he was busy botching the defense of Brendan Dassey, as seen in the Netflix series\u00a0Making a Murderer. As you may recall, and as a Seventh Circuit panel later pointed out<\/a>, after he was appointed \u201cnearly all of Kachinsky\u2019s work on Dassey\u2019s case involved communicating with the local media\u2026.\u201d Now, this is something defense lawyers occasionally do. But they generally don\u2019t say things like \u201cthere is, quite frankly, no defense\u201d while doing it.<\/em><\/p>\n I should say that I don\u2019t do criminal-defense work, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019d be that different from my own work in the sense that my clients probably wouldn\u2019t want me to go on TV and say things like \u201cthere is, quite frankly, no defense\u201d when talking about their cases. I haven\u2019t asked them about this. It\u2019s just a feeling I have.<\/em><\/p>\n According to the panel, Kachinsky also: told the media he believed Dassey\u2019s interrogation had been \u201cstandard and legitimate,\u201d though at the time he hadn\u2019t even watched the videos showing detectives saying a lot of questionable and suggestive things to his 16-year-old, developmentally disabled client; sent tips to the prosecution about the possible location of a murder weapon; allowed his investigator to meet with Dassey alone to try to get him to accept a plea deal; and allowed police to interrogate Dassey a second time without himself bothering to be present for the interview. The trial judge later found his work in the matter \u201cindefensible and deficient,\u201d granted his motion to withdraw from as counsel, and ordered that he not be appointed in any further felony matters.<\/em><\/p>\n I was therefore a little surprised to learn, as I just did, that Kachinsky was then and continued to be a municipal judge.<\/em><\/p>\n According to this February 2018 report by the\u00a0 Appleton Post-Crescent<\/a>, Kachinsky \u201chas been the municipal judge, an elected position,\u201d in Fox Crossing, Wisconsin, \u201csince 1997,\u201d which would mean he held that position while he was semi-representing Dassey in 2006. Municipal judges there handle \u201cforfeiture level traffic and ordinance violations,\u201d but apparently not criminal matters, which I assume is why he was still eligible for criminal-defense appointments. More perplexing is how he got\u00a0re-elected after the 2006 debacle, which must have been news locally even though the Netflix series had not come out yet. In any event, he was suspended from the bench in July of this year after he was arrested for violating a restraining order, and this is where we get to the meowing part of the story.<\/em><\/p>\n A court clerk accused Kachinsky<\/a> of harassing her beginning in 2017, saying he had sent her inappropriate personal emails, posted personal information about her, and allegedly done a variety of other weird and creepy things. These included filing a reprimand against her for \u201crefusing to acknowledge or return Christmas greetings from him,\u201d mentioning that he had noticed her mother\u2019s location on a Facebook feature called \u201cNearby Friends,\u201d and sitting next to her desk \u201cfor almost 40 minutes tapping a pen on a legal pad in his lap, staring at her and making \u2018cat noises\u2019 until she was so uncomfortable that she left.\u201d He denied or explained away most of the allegations, but a superior court judge granted a restraining order against him in February 2018. Police said Kachinsky sent her an email \u201calmost immediately after this hearing<\/a>\u201d was over, which apparently is what resulted in his arrest and suspension. The restraining-order charges were later dropped, but Kachinsky was ultimately charged with felony stalking.<\/em><\/p>\n Kachinsky has previously conceded that he may have made cat noises on occasion, but said he did so only once or twice, perhaps to entertain a small child, and that even then the noises were made by a toy cat<\/a>, not by Judge Len Kachinsky himself, though it\u2019s not clear to me why that last point would make a difference. But at his trial last week<\/a>, Kachinsky\u2019s attorney seemed to go a little further, arguing that it was well-known that Kachinsky would occasionally meow or take other \u201cquirky and odd\u201d actions, which people generally found \u201cendearing\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c[Witnesses will testify that] he would be heard to meow randomly on occasion,\u00a0that he would be whistling through\u00a0the day when he goes to court and he would occasionally break into odd political\u00a0comparisons not connected to the conversation they were having,\u201d [defense attorney Brandt] Swardenski said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The\u00a0 Post-Crescent<\/a> \u00a0didn\u2019t report the details<\/a> of the promised meowing testimony, an omission I consider indefensible and deficient under the circumstances. The clerk herself did testify to the cat-noises incident recounted above (among other things, of course), but so far as I can tell the Post-Crescent\u00a0didn\u2019t report on Kachinsky\u2019s testimony on that point, if any. \u00a0So it remains unclear whether the alleged harassing incident would have been consistent with the \u201crandom meowing\u201d behavior to which Kachinsky admitted (via his attorney). I guess we\u2019ll have to wait for the Netflix series to learn more about that.<\/em><\/p>\n The jury got the case on Friday afternoon, but didn\u2019t reach a verdict that day. After returning on Monday, jurors acquitted Kachinsky<\/a> of the stalking charge. He immediately filed a petition asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reinstate him as a judge, though he conceded it might not be \u201cpractical\u201d for him to return to the position, saying he might encounter a \u201chostile environment.\u201d He still faces ethics charges filed by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, so those might also make it impractical for him to return.<\/em><\/p>\n His former client, Brendan Dassey, will not be returning either. Though Dassey\u2019s habeas petition was granted by the Seventh Circuit panel cited above, an en banc panel then disagreed and reinstated the conviction<\/a>, choosing\u2014in a 4-3 vote over a strong dissent\u2014to defer to the state courts\u2019 findings that Dassey\u2019s confession was voluntary. (That opinion does not mention Kachinsky at all.) The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear the case, meaning Dassey\u2019s life sentence will stand.<\/em><\/p>\n Kachinsky has said he will run again for municipal judge in the next election, a sentence I have added mostly for the benefit of voters in Fox Crossing, Wisconsin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or cats. Meow. (See below for reference.) Gee, I’ll bet you think I’m referring to the Texas federal judge’s peculiar and highly derided decision that the entire ACA is unconstitutional. Which he held until the 2018 election was over, but … Continue reading \u201cQuirky\u201d Lawyer Acquitted of Stalking; Concedes He Did \u201cMeow Randomly on Occasion\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n
Dec 14, 2018 01:37 pm | Kevin<\/h4>\n
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